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Syria suicide bomber kills 31 people, mostly civilians

Dozens wounded in Hama as man detonates truck packed with explosives, on same day Arab League announces new date for Syrian peace talks.

A picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on Sunday shows the site of a reported suicide bomb that targeted an army checkpoint on the outskirts of Hama. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the 31 dead were civilians. (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

By Star wire services

Sun., Oct. 20, 2013

BEIRUT—A suicide bomber driving a truck packed with 1.5 tonnes of explosives killed at least 31 people and wounded dozens in the Syrian city of Hama on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group reported.

The man blew himself up inside the vehicle on a busy road on the outskirts of the city in central Syria, the SANA news agency said. It blamed “terrorists,” the term it uses to describe rebel forces trying to topple President Bashar Assad.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack targeted an army checkpoint but most of the dead were civilians.

Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old conflict began as peaceful protests but has turned into civil war. More than 100,000 people have died, according to United Nations figures, in fighting that is now spread across most of the country.

Rebels have been joined by hardline Islamists, some of them linked to Al Qaeda, who have become increasingly powerful among opposition forces.

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According to the Observatory, the suicide bomber was from the Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate that has frequently used suicide bombers to attack military and political targets.

Rebels also used a car bomb a day earlier to attack a checkpoint on the outskirts of Damascus. Heavy clashes erupted after the blast and continued on Sunday.

Rebels said they seized the first checkpoint and were now fighting to capture a second one down the road. The checkpoints, to the southeast of the capital, sit between the rebel-held suburb of Mleiha and the government-held suburb of Jaramana.

“These checkpoints are the fortress between us and the next air force defence site,” said Nidal, a rebel speaking by Skype. “If we can destroy it we can liberate the base.”

Syrian military jets have pounded nearby rebel-held areas. Rebels hold several suburbs ringing the capital but have yet to make deep inroads into the capital, due to a sustained army blockade.

Doctors in one suburb to the west of Damascus, Mouadamiya, have reported an increasing number of deaths due to malnutrition.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the chief of the Arab League announced a date for a new attempt at Syrian peace talks, more than a year after an initial round of talks collapsed.

Nabil Elaraby, the head of the Cairo-based Arab League, said that international powers would convene talks between Assad’s government and opposition leaders on Nov. 23 in Geneva. Elaraby told reporters the announcement came as the result of discussions with Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy for Syria.

But in the same press conference in Cairo, Brahimi said an official date had not yet been set, Reuters reported.

Syrian opposition leaders swiftly dismissed the announcement as unwarranted hype in a process that has been repeatedly delayed. “They are saying there is a meeting and I am saying that there isn’t yet,” said Haithem Maleh, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council.

Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said the government was ready to attend the Geneva talks but that it would not negotiate with “terrorists,” the state-run SANA reported.

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